Character Madness and Musings

What are you hoping for in 2016? I usually like to spend some time going over the year that past, just to see if I made my goals, but for whatever reason, I didn't make any last year. I don't bother with resolutions, they seem to be more self discipline than I have, but I think goals and things to hope for are a positive endeavor. So here are a few of mine. I haven't been writing as much as I should, so I made a schedule, and added catch up days in case I fall behind. I have a few novels that are almost finished, a couple of anthology novelettes, and of course I plan on keeping up on Pretentious. I also have another series of short stories planned, but that will all be published together when the time comes. But every writer probably has more writing on their new year list. Reading more books is a definite for the new year. Most people know that I read for a screenwriting contest every year, but this year, I want to read more novels, and post more reviews.

This Week Tolor Interviews  Beslynx Spiritwalker Interview 3 of 5  from  The Followers of Torments, series,  by Katheryn Caffee Tell us about your story Which one?  If it’s about me, you’ll have to wait.  I’ve seen you talking to the others, so I presume you wish to speak about that filth who tries to pretend to be an alpha?   What part do you play in it? I tricked, and I was trapped.  I want no part in this tale. Is it scary or a love story? Who cares.  If it is scary, then it is even more reason for me to get out of it.  I still cannot believe the Woodland Path helped him trick me into the Path forsaken collar of his, and now will not provide me any guidance. Have you heard any good gossip lately? None worth sharing.  Thanks to the fiend who claims he “owns” me, I am going to have to move again.  And, I had just begun to earn a place in that village, too.  Do you realize how much it is going to cost me?  If not in wares, than in contracts that I ca

This Week Tolor Interviews  Akantheldama Interview 2 of 5  from  The Followers of Torments, series,  by Katheryn Caffee Tell us about your story There are two stories with me.  The first is how I came to be, though I have not yet attempted to chronicle that one.  The second is much later, after I had learned the rudiments of what I needed to know.  I convinced my progenitor to “lose” me in a wager to the fighter I saw so long ago in the Sands.  There is something about him… something I can not yet grasp… that is important to myself, and my House.  Only in service to him will I be able to come to understand what that something is, or to bring my rogue gifts under control. What part do you play in it? I am a guide for Nameless, though I must tread carefully.  He is my master, and yet I must ensure he reaches the end I have foreseen.   I am also his Silk’s trainer.  All new captives are turned over to me for their training in preparation for the Sands.  He helps, but a

Ironically, this was this week's blog prompt, but it seems like a hurdle to me. There have been a few roadblocks for me over the years. Idea's usually aren't the issue though. One of my favorite screenwriters used to tell his students to open a newspaper if they need ideas. There's plenty of tension and life happening in there. I've never opened the newspaper, but I love tinkering with writer's prompts and images. Usually running into the right image is just what I need. I've used prompts and images, for both stories, and single scenes. Sometimes I have trouble changing scenes when the intensity changes. I've found music is great for getting past that. I just figure out what emotion or atmosphere I need to create. There are all kinds of music playlists on youtube, spotify, and other websites. Just key in what you need. If words bother you, there are instrumentals, which is what I use most often, since words distract me. Since I plan my storie

It's been a while since I wrote the last hurdles in writing post. This one is pretty huge for some people, and others tend to ignore this piece of craft. Not writing the prologue was never a real issue for me, but the problem it causes for many writer's, including myself at times, is the same,  Then how will the reader's know the premise or background, and where do I start my story? I'm going to start off by reminding you that I believe in craft. There are reasons that some things work, and others don't, but I've never been taught to see them as rules. Every writer has their own thoughts on the issue, and their own style of writing. The comments in this post are simply my opinions. Take what you find helpful, and toss the rest. So, let's start with some of the reasons we avoid prologues. I read a post once where someone said this.  "Writing a prologue is like saying I'm going to tell you a story, but I have to tell you this fi

This Week Tolor Interviews  Nameless  from The Followers of Torments, series,  by Katheryn Caffee It's been a while since the last character interview. This will be the first of five character interviews from this series. Be prepared for a treat. Nameless speech pattern is strange to follow at first, but he has become a much loved character by many, and it becomes easier to follow after settling into the differences.  Tell us about your story What “story” is?  Life is.  Live, die, born, become.  Is story not to anyone. What part do you play in it? What part is?  Life is.  Win I, eat I, live I.  Said enough? Is it scary or a love story? ::shrugs::  Scary why?  Living am free now.  Alone not, Her favor have always.  Apart not am. Have you heard any good gossip lately? Gossip?  What is? If you could be anything you want to be, what would you be? As am now, everything perfectly wrong.  Her life my care. Her honor my hands hold.   Why? Purpose

This is the first of this week's blog-prompts, and for me, it's a pretty good one. I have a writer's prompt blog, and a Pinterest board with fantasy images for writing prompts, I bought tons of images, and have used free sites too. And we all know about the blog-prompt group, since I usually post from it at least once a week. I also had a Musicians with a Pen, group, but lacking vision, it bit the dust pretty fast. For me, inspiration comes from everywhere, and when I'm writing, the muse goes all over the place. I've tried writing the ideas down, but I've found that the vision still wavers with time. So, to avoid that problem, I started writing terrible first drafts. I know that's okay, but the worse they are, the more difficult I find the rewrite to be. I have a couple of great novels coming as soon as I finish those rewrites. My fascination with images began when I told a writing partner I wanted to write a dragon story. Waiting to hash out the p

I've been really bad keeping this blog up lately. Not because I don't know what to write about, there are an abundance of things to discuss, and this blog is one of my favorite things that I work on as a writer. I do have my writer's prompt blog caught up till the first of the year, but I'm a writer's prompt fanatic. Setting up the blog prompt group was fun, but we aren't always interested in the same style of posts. I tend to focus on characterization a lot, but that's just who I am. I love great characters, and having fun with them. Keep your eyes open for the Character interviews coming up. They should be a lot of fun. So, Three Wishes? Like most people I know, I would wish for an end to hatred.  I've learned over the years that it takes a special person to agree to disagree. We're people, and we all think differently. That will never change, so we need to agree to disagree sometimes, get along with each other, and stop hating. I didn&

As outlined in the December newsletter What do you find interesting to read in a newsletter?

I'm a little late on this one. I pulled a prompt, then decided to make Thanksgiving the prompt, and had no idea what I wanted to write, so now I'm at the end of the week, and this part of the holiday season is over. I've always thought Thanksgiving and Christmas were special days, because for some of us, it's the only time our families get together. My son and his family are separated from me by more than a thousand miles, and working out the time and funds for travel is always debatable. I think that's true for a lot of people these days, so this thought is truer than ever. My husband and I stayed home this year and spent the holiday with friends. We talked about the last year, friends we lost, some recently, and others that moved away. There was also a lot of conversation about the past, what we're doing for the rest of the season, and what we hope for next year. All good things to talk about. It was a lot of fun, but I still missed seeing the rest

Spoiler Alert! I never did work on last week's blog prompt. I love this weeks topic because I have so many favorite characters. Here are a few of them:  Merlin, from Mary Stewart's Merlin Trilogy, Merlin from Mists of Avalon, Ichigo from the Anime, Bleach, and Rurouni Kenshin, from another anime named after him. But my favorite character is Lucivar Yaslana, from Anne Bishop's Black Jewels series. I'm big on studying characters. I love to see how the writers brought them to life, and what makes them great.The one thing all of these characters have in common is that they are forced into situations they don't want, and their construction is outside the normal box we place 'types' of characters in. Anne bishop takes characters that are ultra powerful, and gives them a thorn that makes them weak. Her story is the only 18+ on the list, but her storyline and characterization is awesome. She took a Christian theme and applied it to a world of darkness wher

Time lines. I guess I should clarify. I'm not talking about the date your manuscript is due, but the time line in your story. I know not everyone is affected by them, but they have been one of the biggest hurdles in my writing career. This hurdle can arise when you are dealing with characters who age throughout the story; time passages, time travel, and in historical fiction, as well as other situations. The first time I dealt with this problem was my very first story. I've mentioned Pretentious, before. I'm publishing it now as a serial, but it's been on the back-burner for years since I've been focused on my fantasy stories. Last time I mentioned it, I had to go on a quest to learn how to infuse emotion into the story. This time, my characters meet in high school, and grow up together. Events and friends ages all needed to match. Ironically, One of the issues was my main character and his sister being the right ages to support where each of them were

I think this topic is an important series, so I want to add to it, and I had a list of topics, but managed to accidentally delete it while not paying close attention. That habit in itself is a hurdle, but I went looking for writer's tips just to find a new topic for today, and it only took me seconds to find it. When you have a question or problem with your writing, who do you ask? This is a tough question. There is so much information out there. Some is good, and some is not. What works for one may not work for someone else. So what can you do? I can't give you a solid answer, but will give you my opinions, and explain what worked for me. My first hurdle was a scene in my first manuscript. It was a sad break-up between my main character and his girlfriend. It should have been heart-wrenching, but it had the emotion of a rock. It didn't occur to me to turn to the internet, so I kept rewriting. When I first started writing I took a creative , and screenwritin

This week's blog prompt was about 'hurdles in writing'. Hurdles we faced, and how we overcame them. It sounded dangerously close to the writer's journey, if you read that last week, but there are hurdles that weren't there. Things that seemed less important, so I didn't think of them, or they weren't mentioned, and while that's true in some cases, I think this hurdle was pretty important. Here is the link to my blog prompt group if you want to join us. We're on facebook, and I pull two new prompts from a jar every Monday.  Blog Prompts  It's old fashioned, but fun, and our blogs are never neglected unless we're over the top, busy. Today's hurdle is criticism When you take classes specific to novel writing, or even creative writing courses, you have your classmates to critique your work. I remember the very first time my creative writing teacher addressed critiquing. There were people arguing like cats the following week. I w

So What Makes Paranormal... Paranormal? In an age when writer's are asked to place their work in a specific genre, which genre do we choose? Just to name a few genres we have; paranormal, dystopian, steampunk, fantasy, science fiction, supernatural, epic fantasy, etc... There seems to be an army of option all bleeding into one another and making for a confusing decision. I'll spend the next few paragraphs giving you a better idea on what defines the paranormal genre and separates it from all the others. First the actual definition of paranormal as defined by the Merriam-Webster Dictionary. "PARANORMAL - very strange and not able to be explained by what scientists know about nature and the world." Still not super clear, right? As writers I think we have done a better job by narrowing in on a more thorough answer. Novels tagged as paranormal have been written in our modern day world with the introduction of paranormal elements such as; werewolves, va

The Writer's Journey was the blog prompt for my group last week, and since this week's would have been a little redundant for me, I decided to take on my path as a writer. Authors and Screenwriters are as unique as snowflakes. If you asked the same question to hundreds of writer's, Every story would differ. So here is my journey in the blanket of white. I tend to be a scattered person. That's one of the reasons I plan my stories. When I get a new idea, it often comes like a download with numerous characters and lots of scattered plot and subplot information. I think my writing journey has been very much the same. Years ago, a friend asked why I didn't write. I always had a book in my hands, and would sometimes read for days with minimal interruptions. Secretly I wanted to write, but I didn't really believe I had the talent to do it. The seed had been planted, but it would be years before I broke down and took my first creative writing class. I remem

Realm Jumper Chronicles By Raven Williams Volumes 1-3  Now available in one great set. Realm Jumper Chronicles Omnibus Edition A world where fantasy and paranormal collide and chaos reigns supreme.  Do you dare to enter?   Welcome to the Omnibus Edition of the Realm Jumper Chronicles.  In this edition, you will find the first three books in the Realm Jumper Chronicles Series. Elven-Jumper, Book 1: What happens when humans begin having memories and dreams of a life as an Elf? Do the Elves step in or do they leave the humans to their own devices and hope they remain undetected?  Elf-Witch, Book 2: When an Ancient Witch Prophecy is discovered, The Elves, Guardians, and Dragon-Shifters become involved in the human realm once more. When worlds collide, destinies become entwined. Elven-Fire, Book 3: With war looming, each of the Elder Species must make a choice. The Elves and Phoenix-Shifters have pledged their support. Will the other species j

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